Heckling to the Choir

Regular readers of this publication are aware that we disagree with almost everything President Barack Obama says and does, but we wish he wouldn’t take it personally. Some of our friends say and would do equally stupid things, and for the most part our disagreements do not become disagreeable. The president seems to believe that it’s all about him, however, and on Wednesday was pouting to another crowd of hand-picked adorers in Kansas City that his critics should “Stop being mad all the time, stop just hatin’ all the time.”

The hand-picked crowd of adorers started chanting “We love you,” laughed raucously at all the boilerplate ridicule of Republicans, and the president was temporarily transported back in time to those happier days of ’08 when hope and change were in the air and it actually was all about him. Perhaps the president hasn’t noticed that hand-picking such adoring crowds has become a harder chore for his aides as his cult of personality has dwindled down to Jonestown levels, or that a majority of disapproving Americans outside the arenas are no longer paying any attention by his very un-presidential act. It’s not just the phony hip-hop folksiness of that dropped “g” at the end of “hatin’,” and the petulant foot-stomping about that stupid Constitution that allows those mean old congressmen to spitefully vote for what their constituents want rather than what he wants, but mostly how very obvious it is that the ridicule is being offered in lieu of a reasonable argument.

Surely you’ve encountered liberals at the right sorts of cocktail parties who respond to any unfashionable opinion with a dismissive laugh and a sneering put-down, and when asked have nothing to explain the response except another dismissive laugh and sneering put-down, but one expects better from a president of the United States. We recall the president ridiculing Mitt Romney’s statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin should be regarded as a “geo-political” by recycling an old “Seinfeld” gag and chortling that “The ’80s called and they want their foreign policy back.” Now the ’80s are calling back, and America wishes that Ronald Reagan were still around to answer the phone. We also recall another hand-picked crowd of adorers laughing it up about complaints that the southern border isn’t secure, with such zingers as “next they’ll want us to build a moat, and put alligators in it,” and you would have gotten the sense that those crazy Republicans truly believed a hundred thousand or so minors could just waltz across the border unaccompanied. Those crazy Republicans’ paranoid fantasy that if you liked your health insurance plan you wouldn’t be able to keep it under Obamacare got a lot of laughs from those hand-picked crowds of adorers, too, and a lot of the president’s other frequent forays into ridicule now look just as ridiculous.

At this point an argument, complete with facts and logic and a proper respect for the swelling opposing opinion, would probably be more effective. We’re not hatin’, just hoping.

— Bud Norman

Beyond Debate

The most disheartening story we encountered in the past month concerned the little-noticed world of college debate, which was once a stubborn outpost of rigorous intellectual exercise but apparently has since degenerated into just another territory of trendy academic nonsense. We found this alarming partly for personal reasons, as the old style of scholastic debate was a favorite pastime of our otherwise wasted youth, but also for more pertinent reasons, as the same degeneration is so painfully apparent in the quality of the modern world’s real-life debates.

Way back in our playing days high school and college debate taught how to formulate a logical argument and state it persuasively, among many other things. Intensive research about the topics chosen for each season was required to bring home those cheap trophies and silver cups and the satisfaction of prevailing in verbal combat, and we wound up knowing enough about subjects ranging from the criminal justice system to international trade to learn how very complicated they are and how very badly they are often managed. The sport taught us the basics of economics and political theory, how to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of particular policy proposal and compare its potential benefits to its inherent risks, and to consider the myriad of intended consequences that could always be found in even the most appealing ideas. Teachers, colleagues, competitors, and the thick stack of books we we devoured taught us enough about the social sciences to convincingly question the methodology of almost all of it. Debate taught how to spot a logical fallacy, and for showing-off purposes it even taught the Greek classifications for many of them. It taught us to question sources, a knack that came in handy during years of toil in the media, and to question underlying assumptions and check the results. Like everyone else that we know who took part back in those days, who are by and large a remarkably successful lot, we regard scholastic debate as by far the most educational experience of our education.

Nowadays, according to The Atlantic Monthly, collegiate debate competitions are teaching is distinctly different lessons. The magazine reports that the most recent final round of the Cross Examination Debate Association’s championship featured two teams that chose to ignore the chosen topic about presidential war powers and instead argue about an alleged war by the United States government against poor black communities. Instead, according to The Atlantic Monthly, “the two teams engaged in a heated discussion of concepts like ‘nigga authenticity’ and performed hip-hop and spoken word poetry in the traditional timed format. At one point during (a competitor’s) rebuttal, the clock ran out but he refused to yield the floor. ‘F**k the time,’ he yelled.” Such antics have prevailed in recent years, according to the magazine’s account, with an Emporia State University team winning the previous year’s championship with “Many of their arguments, based on personal memoir and rap music, completely (ignoring) the stated resolution, and instead (asserting) that the framework of collegiate debate has historically privileged straight, white, middle-class students.” The once-venerable Atlantic Monthly reports this as an exciting new development in an article headlined “Hacking Traditional White College Debate’s White Privilege Problem,” which goes to show that an alarming decline in standards is not restricted to collegiate debate.

A jaded scribe at the conservative Weekly Standard read the same article and cynically concluded that at least collegiate debate has become up-to-date, as personal memoir and rap music and screeds about race and class and gender and all the other fashionable concepts are the way arguments are won in contemporary America, and it pains us to concede he has a point. In all of our conversations with people outside our coterie of fellow right-wing bastards over the past many years we have found that facts and logics and such petty matters as results are of little avail in persuading people. During a recent discussion about out-of-wedlock births the woman we were talking with demanded the names of any pregnant teenagers we currently knew before she would even consider our opinions on the matter, as if knowing a presently knocked-up 16-year-old might make us more enthusiastic for bastardy, another friend was offended by the suggestion that the United Auto Workers bear any responsibility for General Motors’ recent woes resulting from the company’s faulty ignition switches just because they own the company as a result of the government’s sweetheart bail-out deal, and anecdote trumps data every time. One of our more right-leaning pals recalled attending a public forum on gun control where a woman gave a heart-rending account of losing a son to a gun accident, ergo more control is needed, and admitted with some frustration that there was no arguing with that fallacy. Of course, almost any logical argument seems to be negated the white maleness of the person making it. Logic itself is a white male construct, after all, as evidenced by those Greek classifications that the nerds use to show off, and is therefore a tool of cultural oppression or some such academic cant. As crazy as it sounds, though, the last two presidential elections were won by personal memoir and rap music and screeds about race and class and gender, even though the results were starkly apparent by the second one, and our country now proceeds with policies derived from these ideas rather than facts and logic and results.

The results, we expect, will not be beneficial. Quaint notions about facts and logic and dispassionate analysis and adherence to time limits and standards of acceptable language might have been originally discerned by those pesky dead white males, but so were the laws of gravity, and anyone who thinks his “nigga authenticity” renders such intellectual constructs irrelevant is invited to test that theory by walking off a tall building. Alas, the degeneration of public discourse threatens to take us all on that metaphorical plunge.

One of the better sources of news and opinion on the modern media landscape is the estimable Powerlineblog.com web site, and we were not surprised to learn that its authors were veterans of the old-time college debate circuit. They shared our disheartened response to The Atlantic Monthly’s report, and noted that while the college debaters of the old days were in fact a very diverse group of people in terms of race and class and gender and individual characteristics they were all privileged to have learned from the best of the world’s civilization rather than its latest crazes. It’s a shame that the current crop of debaters won’t enjoy the same privilege, and that the rest of the country will suffer the consequences.

— Bud Norman

Contretemps on the Court

The best players in the world are showcasing their skills in the National Basketball Association’s playoffs, but all the sports world can talk about is a spat between one of the team owners and his girlfriend.

For unknown reasons the spat between Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and paramour V. Stiviano was recorded on audio tape, for unknown reasons the tape wound up in the hands of the widely-read TMZ.com celebrity gossip internet site, and for obvious reasons it has since become the biggest basketball brouhaha in a while. Any argument between a married and fabulously wealthy white 81-year-old sports mogul and his 26-year-old half-black, half-Mexican girlfriend will provoke a certain amount of prurient interest in the readers of celebrity gossip sites, but this argument concerned his objections to her publicizing her friendships with blacks and Hispanics on social media. Add the element of race to such a salacious story and the media coverage goes into the full-press mode usually reserved for missing Malaysian airliners, other celebrities weigh in with their indignation, major figures in the sport call for the offender’s banishment, and even the President of the United States feels obliged to interrupt a trade mission to Asia to add his disapproving comment.

This all seems rather inordinate, although there’s certainly no defending the comments Sterling can be heard making. We listened to the entirety of his telephoned confrontation with his girlfriend, despite the creepy voyeuristic feelings it induced, and could not escape the consensus conclusion that he’s a racist as well as an all-around jerk. The world is rife with racists of all colors, however, and if the media intend to occupy themselves with chastising all the all-around jerks there won’t be time left cover any of the issues of real significance. When the controversy starts to overshadow the scores, some perspective is required.

Having duly acknowledged the repugnant racism of Sterling’s side of the conversation, we’d like to note a few other issues that will be largely overlooked among the mass harrumphing. There’s a troubling matter of how we wound up listening to what an American citizen had every right to expect was a private conversation, for one thing. We are as ardent defenders of freedom of the press as any of the big media that are piling scorn on Sterling, but we also believe in a sufficient sphere of privacy to allow for contentious conversations with girlfriends. Our suspicion is that all of Sterling’s critics, right up to the President, would also prefer some privacy regarding such matters.

Also worth noting is how very odd Sterling’s views seem. Aside from the oddity of a octogenarian white man spouting racist opinions to his 20-something mixed-race girlfriend, and the irony of a registered Democrat who routinely signs multi-million paychecks to the black employees who have lately made his business successful objecting to any association with minorities, Sterling’s rant is strikingly archaic. At one point in the conversation he tells his girlfriend that he objects her being seen in the company of other minorities because “I live in a culture,” and he insists that culture will bring its opprobrium down on any inter-ethnic friendships. Apparently being an 81-year-old multi-billionaire can leave one so very disassociated with modern society that Sterling did not realize that now society brings its opprobrium down on anyone who doesn’t conscientiously seek out such relationships, but we assume he has by now been brought up to date. Some critics have seized the opportunity to lament how very common Sterling’s views are, but they’d be hard-pressed to explain why they’re still newsworthy.

Calls for Sterling’s banishment from the NBA further raise the question of whether someone’s property rights should be voided as a result of his opinions, no matter how repulsive those opinions might be. The owner of the Dallas Mavericks franchise has endorsed the “911 truther” conspiracy theories, which we find highly offensive, and professional sports team owners in general are a sleazy lot ever-eager to reach into the taxpayers’ wallets and gorge their most loyal customers, but purging the business of all but the righteous will leave us with an insufficient amount of sports.

There’s something uncomfortable, too, about the way that contemporary society so severely punishes any deviation from its latest orthodoxy on race. The same scorn that is heaped on the likes of outright racists such as Sterling also falls on the likes of Charles Murray, the brilliant sociologist who inspired the welfare reform that did so much to benefit black America, or Clarence Thomas, the black Supreme Court Justice who bravely works for a truly color-blind legal system, or countless others who criticize the policies that have lately brought high unemployment and declining wealth to the minorities of America.

Then again, we never did care for Sterling. Old-time basketball fans will recall the decades when the Clippers were the laughingstocks of professional American sports, with Sterling’s tightfistedness and propensity to overrule the basketball experts in his employ the obvious causes of their ineptitude, and we’re disinclined to root for any team located in Los Angeles. We have an admiration for the play of former University of Oklahoma Sooner Blake Griffin and the unabashedly nerdish Chris Paul, and like that they have supplanted the hated Los Angeles Lakers as the city’s top team, but even before the latest revelations we were never Clippers fans. The Clippers’ owner is apparently a racist and an all-around jerk, but we’ll just keep hoping the Boston Celtics can get another Bill Russell or Larry Bird and turn our attention to more consequential stories.

–Bud Norman